by Paul S. Kemp
“We’re refueling and then I’ll head back to the search area. Kallon will activate the hack as soon as you take down the station.”
“Simple as the push of a button,” Kallon said.
“How will he know when it’s down? If you’re underground I can’t reach him.”
“How will you know when it’s down?” Cham asked Kallon.
“I’ll know.”
“He’ll know,” Cham said to Isval.
“Understood,” Isval said to Cham. “See you at the search grid, then.”
“Just limp in, Isval. You’re supposed to be damaged.”
“Right,” she said.
“Good luck,” he said. “I’ll see you soon.”
He sent her a set of coordinates within the search area where they thought Vader and the Emperor had gone down. They’d rendezvous there.
“Got it,” she said. “Luck to you, too.”
“Exits, Isval. Always think one through. Then think through another.”
“Always,” she said, and managed not to make it sound ironic.
The depth underground soon cut off communications.
Cham had neglected to tell her that he’d already diverted some of the rebel ships retreating from the moon base and sent them to the map grid to start the search for Vader and the Emperor’s shuttle. Conceivably, they could get lucky and find their prey before Cham and Isval ever arrived.
“Hurry,” he said to Kallon. “I want to get back out there.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Isval’s comm buzzed on an open frequency, using her call sign. She and Faylin shared a look of surprise. They shouldn’t be receiving any comm chatter. Still, she opened the channel.
“Go,” she said.
“Isval, this is Nordon. We’ve found something in the search area. It looks like the ship Vader was supposed to be on—”
“Nordon! Wait, what are you doing in the search area already? Did Cham authorize that? And what are you doing on this frequency?”
Her tone was sharper than she intended, but only because she didn’t want anyone else to find Vader. She wanted to find him, for Pok, for Eshgo, find him and see herself reflected in the lenses of his helmet as she pulled the trigger and put a blaster shot through his chest.
“The comm is encrypted, Isval. We’re the first out here, and yes, Cham knows. He diverted us from the moon base withdrawal. Two more teams are en route.”
“Three when we get there,” she said.
“Right. Anyway, we found what looks like a downed ship in the forest at these coordinates.”
Isval’s shipboard comp took in the coordinates. They were at the northern edge of the search area.
“Send it out to the other teams en route,” Isval said.
“Is it the Emperor’s shuttle?” Faylin asked, eagerness in her tone.
“Have you confirmed the ID of the ship?” Isval asked Nordon, and held her breath in anticipation of the answer.
“The forest is too thick, but it looks like an Imperial shuttle. We could set down and have a look.”
Isval was already shaking her head. “Negative, negative. Do not get on the ground, Nordon. If it’s Vader…just don’t get on the ground. Understood?”
“Understood. What then?”
Isval considered options. “Have you informed Cham?”
“Can’t raise him.”
Still in the underground base, then. She knew what Cham would advise: reconnoiter and wait for reinforcements.
“Eyeball it as best you can, Nordon. If you confirm it’s the Emperor’s shuttle, or if you get a visual on Vader or the Emperor, wipe them from the face of the planet.”
“Copy that. What are you doing?”
“Blowing things up,” she said.
“As usual,” Nordon said. “See you soon, then.”
“Here we go,” Isval said to Faylin.
—
The generator hummed to life and the dish on the portable communications array started to turn as it sought an uplink.
“We’ll have a connection in moments, Lord Vader,” the captain of the Royal Guard said.
“Use the Emperor’s personal frequency. Arrange for immediate—”
Vader sensed it before he could see it. He looked sharply at his Master, saw him staring up at the sky, at two rapidly approaching lights descending from altitude—ships, Vader knew. Perhaps they’d seen the fire.
“Ships incoming, my lords,” said one of the Royal Guards. He held field magnifiers to his helmet’s lenses. “Not Imperial. A pair of Twi’lek freighters, I think. Should I fire a flare, my lords?”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” the Emperor said with a hard smile.
The ships closed the distance rapidly, their clunky, disk-shaped silhouettes coming into clear focus as they neared.
Vader activated his lightsaber and stepped in front of his Master.
—
Isval turned her mind from Nordon’s discovery and piloted the escort ship in at a slow pace, heading toward Ryloth’s equator. Below them, the planet’s surface was a rocky, uneven sea of browns, tans, and blacks. Dry riverbeds veined the terrain. Thin forests dotted the landscape here and there. In the distance, one of the equatorial mountain ranges rose majestically into the sky, backlit by the reds and oranges of the setting sun. Isval rarely allowed herself the time to appreciate beauty, but she spent a moment doing just that.
“Something, eh?” Faylin asked. “I’m not even Twi’lek and it takes my breath away sometimes.”
“Everything looks beautiful from far away,” Isval said. “Harsh up close, though.”
“Right,” Faylin said, and tore her eyes away from the mountains. She leaned forward and stared out the viewscreen. “I don’t see the base yet.”
“We’re three hundred klicks out,” Isval said, eyeing the scanner readout. “No ships in the vicinity.”
“They’re all on rescue or patrol,” Faylin said.
“Let’s get this done and get to hunting.”
Faylin nodded. “Copy that.”
When they closed to within the communication distance typical for Imperial protocol, Isval hailed the base. “Equatorial Base Alpha, this is Imperial Escort Twenty-Nine, do you copy?”
The response came immediately. “Escort, you are loud and clear.”
“I have wounded VIPs from the Perilous who are in need of immediate medical help. Please have a med team on standby and provide me with a landing pad number.”
Isval watched the scanner, waiting to see the station’s shields drop. Faylin sat in the seat beside her, fidgeting.
“Come on,” Faylin muttered. “Show us your belly and we’ll give you a scratch.”
The shields remained up, however, and the comm crackled. “This is Major Steen Borkas. We received word you were en route. I apologize for this, but please forward your credentials, Escort Twenty-Nine. And who are the VIPs? I served on the Perilous way back when. I’m friends with many of the crew.”
Isval shared a glance with Faylin and bit down on the comlink that connected her to Cham. “They want credentials, Cham. And names of the wounded. Apparently the base commander used to serve on the Perilous.”
Nothing. Cham was still too deep underground.
“The captain’s name was Luitt,” Faylin said. “We could use his name.”
“How do you know that?” Isval asked.
Faylin shrugged. “Picked it up somewhere. What are you going to tell them?”
Isval started composing lies in her mind.
Faylin leaned forward and pointed out the viewscreen. “There it is.”
Ahead they could see the large installation, with its many concrete buildings, the shield generator, and the series of large satellite dishes that formed the hub of the Imperial communications network on Ryloth. The setting sun painted them all in orange. Isval thought she saw a couple of small transports out on the landing pads, but no fighter craft.
“Isval?” Faylin asked.
Isval activated the comm. “I have bridge crew aboard.”
“Bridge crew?” came Borkas’s reply. “I heard Luitt got off safely. Who do you have? The XO?”
Isval silently congratulated herself on not using Luitt’s name and then started spinning the lies. “Sir, I honestly can’t say. I’m just an escort pilot. The officers I have are in very bad shape, as is my boat. It was chaos up there and we barely got clear. I don’t even have the ability to upload my credentials. The comp is a mess.”
Beside her, Faylin screamed, as if she were wounded and in pain.
“Sir,” Isval said, and feigned desperation. “We need help here.”
“Escort Twenty-Nine, you are clear to land on Pad Nine,” Major Borkas said. “Med team is en route.”
Isval disconnected. “We don’t go hot until we get closer,” she said to Faylin.
Isval could not help but smile as the scanner showed the shields go down. As they drew nearer the base, they could make out more details: a group of troops and a med team with its droids hurrying toward Landing Pad 9; the observation and control deck, lit from within, which allowed them to see the officers and troops standing near the large windows and watching their approach.
“I see four dishes,” Faylin said. “We can get them all on one pass.”
“The dishes are the priority and I’ve got those. Your job is to kill every Imperial you can.”
Faylin looked over at her, perhaps surprised at her bloodthirstiness, and nodded.
They closed, the escort’s propulsion eating kilometers. The base grew larger and Isval started picking the order of her targets and gently maneuvering the escort into an attack run. They had to hit all the dishes on the first pass. She didn’t think the escort boat had the firepower to take out a hardened shield generator, so they needed to get the dishes down before Borkas realized what was happening and reenergized the shields.
The comm crackled. “That was Landing Pad Nine,” Borkas said. “Nine, Escort Twenty-Nine.”
“Copy that,” Isval said, but didn’t change course. Instead she accelerated all at once. She activated the targeting computer, knowing the Imperials would pick up on it, and locked on.
“Fire at will,” she said to Faylin.
She kept a mental count in her head, figuring they had thirty seconds at the most.
Faylin had the side-mounted cannons on manual and started firing. Plasma slammed into the base, scattering the medical team and leaving a few corpses on the pad. Isval fired on her locked target, and one of the dishes went up in a cloud of flame and smoke.
Three seconds in.
She didn’t bother locking onto the second; she didn’t have time. She switched the gun to manual and fired, connecting the space between the ship and the dish with lines of plasma. The second dish exploded, its base aflame, and the bulk of it toppled over into a nearby building, causing a secondary explosion that smothered the area in smoke.
Five seconds in.
Isval was unable to see, but she kept her eyes on her instrumentation as she slowed and wheeled the boat hard to port. She was down to twenty seconds. The targeting computer locked on the third dish and she fired. It disappeared into a column of flame and smoke and debris that rained against the escort’s hull. She turned hard to get to the last, with Faylin firing blindly in the haze throughout.
They came out of the smoke and saw the fourth dish ahead. A burst of fire slammed into the side of the boat, causing alarms to scream and rocking them to starboard.
“Defensive emplacements,” Isval said, down to ten seconds. “Going evasive. Target the dish, Faylin.”
Green lines streaked in from the left and the right, bisecting the sky. Another slammed into the ship, but the escort boat’s modest shields and hull held together.
“I can’t hit anything with the ship moving like this!” Faylin said. “Hold it steady!”
Isval was going as slow as she could so as not to overshoot the target, but the lack of speed cost them. She wheeled left and right, up and down, but the escort boat wasn’t a fighter and evaded fire poorly.
Smoke started to fill the cabin. Alarms screamed, announcing failing systems.
“Take the stick,” Isval said.
“We’ll get hit!” Faylin said. “I’m half the pilot you are!”
“Do your best,” Isval said calmly. She had to take out the dish. “You have the stick. I’ve got the guns…now.”
Faylin spat a stream of expletives and took the stick. To her credit, she kept the ship moving, jerking the boat around more or less at random, nothing a seasoned pilot would do but effective enough to keep them from getting vaporized.
The comm rang on the movement’s frequency. Nordon with an update, no doubt. Isval couldn’t spare a moment to respond. Neither could Faylin, who white-knuckled the stick. Once they brought down the last dish, they wouldn’t be able to respond until they were within line of sight.
The smoke blocked the targeting computer, so Isval went to manual and put the last dish in her sights. Faylin swung the ship left and right. Fire from the base crossed directly in front of the bow.
“Fire, Isval!” Faylin screamed.
They drew closer. Isval held her calm, then depressed the fire button. Plasma slammed into the dish, splintering it into a rain of metal shards and an expanding ball of flame.
“Get us clear,” Isval said, exhaling, and Faylin pulled up and accelerated to full. They were out of range of blasterfire almost immediately. The sky filled the viewscreen as they climbed toward the outer atmosphere.
“No pursuit,” Isval said, checking the scanner.
Faylin cursed softly, shaking her head.
Isval checked the comm, hoping Kallon was ready with his hack. She tried her private comm just to make sure.
“Cham, do you copy?”
Nothing. She tried to open the channel on Nordon’s frequency.
“Nordon, do you hear me?”
Again nothing, just dead air and bursts of static.
Faylin said, “Looks like it worked. They’re jammed. Limited comm planetwide. Kallon is good.”
“He is, but let’s not get comfortable,” Isval said. “Hardest part’s yet to come.”
She fed into the navcomp the coordinates of the location where they were supposed to meet Cham. They’d meet him there, then together head to the coordinates she’d received from Nordon. The hunt for Vader would soon be on.
—
The freighters completed a slow flyover, then turned and headed back toward the campsite. As they did, they accelerated and descended at a flat angle.
“I think perhaps they’ve seen what they wanted to see,” the Emperor observed.
Noses down, the freighters began firing from blaster cannons mounted on the top and bottom of the ships, long red lines that exited the ship in superheated pulses. Trees one hundred meters from Vader and the Emperor exploded into splinters under the onslaught, and the lines cut a rapid path along the clearing toward them, putting a patchwork of smoking holes in the earth, closing in on Vader.
One with the Force, Vader held his ground and tensed for impact. Then he exploded into motion, his lightsaber humming as he spun it rapidly left and right, deflecting the powerful blaster shots off into the forest, shattering still more trees, destroying the tents, but sparing the communications array. The kinetic energy from the shots drove him backward, his boots putting furrows in the soft soil.
The Royal Guards, momentarily taken by surprise, recovered enough to plant blaster rifles against their shoulders. They fired at the freighters as the large ships sped over and past them, but the personal weapons did no harm to the shielded and armored ships.
“We should take cover in the trees, my lords!” said the captain.
“I think not,” the Emperor said softly, watching the ships wheel about.
“They will come in lower this time,” Vader said.
“I believe you’re correct,” the Emperor said. He removed his robe, took the elaborately
crafted hilt of his lightsaber in hand, and ignited the blade.
Vader looked on in surprise. He seldom saw his Master so publicly demonstrate his power. And he understood what it meant, of course. There must be no survivors who could bear witness. Only the Royal Guards could be allowed to live—only they could be trusted never to reveal what they’d seen, or even to talk about it among themselves.
The freighters completed their turn and accelerated back toward the clearing, their engines screaming in the otherwise quiet air. The Royal Guards shifted position to stand before the Emperor, partially shielding him with their bodies, and fired as rapidly as they could at the oncoming ships. They hit the ships again and again, but the tiny bolts did no damage.
Vader sank more deeply into the Force. Beside him, he felt his Master’s power gather. He reveled in the moment, in the combined pool of their collective, unadulterated might.
The freighters opened fire, writing thick lines of plasma onto the air. The shots churned the ground, destroyed trees, heated the air of the clearing; one slammed into the chest of a Royal Guard and vaporized all of him save for his helmet.
Lost in the Force, Vader anticipated the shots that would have hit him, saw the appropriate angles of impact and deflection, and used the rapid spinning of his lightsaber to turn first one, then a second, and then a third shot not into the tree line but back at the ships, the heat and energy of the blaster shots driving him backward, warming the hilt of his weapon, a heat he could feel even through his glove. His Master did the same with his lightsaber, the graceful arcs of its red line weaving a protective shield around him and turning the second ship’s shots back at it. Both ships tried to turn out of the way of the redirected shots, one turning hard left, the other hard right, but they only exposed their underbellies and engines to the deflected bolts.
Engines exploded into flame and spit smoke. His Master raised his hands, forming one into a claw emitting jagged bolts of Force lightning that connected him for a moment to the ship. Vader imagined the interior of the craft lit up with the bolts of his Master’s power, the pilots screaming and writhing in pain as the dark side seared their flesh. The Emperor clenched his other hand, taking a mental hold on the ship with the Force. Vader, too, lifted a hand and reached out with the Force toward the other ship.
